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Dual-pressure push switch like camera shutter?

Dear All,

Has anyone ever seen an off-the-shelf pushbutton that has two contacts, one that's made on gentle pressure and a second that's made when you press all the way down? Like the shutter button on most cameras.

I'm actually making a remote shutter release for my camera. I was going to connect up just the main "take picture" contact, since I don't need the autofocus in this case and it seems to work. But then I discovered that another purpose of the first contact is to wake the camera up if it has gone to sleep. Having a separate switch is not ideal since in this case.

Any ideas anyone?

Phil.

Reply to
Phil
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Reply to
Brendan Gillatt

I can't think of anything else that would make use of such a switch, so I suspect they aren't available off the shelf.

Find a scrap camera and take the switch out of that. For that matter, if you can look at the switch you might discover it's a mechanical arrangement that could be duplicated.

Have a real mechanical switch for the "take picture" switch, and then a metal plate that when touched activates the other?

Have two microswitches, one above the other, and a shaft that when pressed, activates the first microswitch, and if you press the shaft further the second swithc is activated.

I think that's where you'll have to go, and then various variations on that theme come to mind, like using slotted optocouplers instead fo microswitches.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

But he wants to activated two different things, but in the same mechanical space.

Like he said, press the button a tiny bit, and it adjusts the autofocus (and activates the LCD panel if it had gone to sleep). Press the button a bit harder, and the camera actually takes a picture.

One button switch connected to two functions wont' allow you to do the actions independently.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black
Reply to
Brendan Gillatt

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up getting two of those mini "tactile" button switches and gluing them one on top of the other. One of then has a repeatably lower activation force than the other and always closes first. The result is quite usable.

I did consider some sort of wire-or circuit, but it seems that when the camera has gone to sleep only one of the pins has power on it, and it's an odd voltage. Although it would probably be safe to short them together, the camera was too expensive to take any riskes....

Cheers,

Phil.

Reply to
Phil

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